With the proliferation of portable, lightweight, video cameras, more videos are being captured in casual settings and without sophisticated recording equipment. For planned events and high value video, microphones are placed near people and things in order to capture the sounds that are most important for each portion of the video. The resulting video is synchronized with audio tracks for each microphone that can be independently amplified and mixed for each frame of the video. When careful microphone placement is not possible, for example at sporting events, directional microphones are used to capture sound primarily from particular locations on the playing field or in the stands. A directional microphone is able to amplify sound coming from a particular direction over other sounds and ambient noise.
Some video cameras, tablets, and smartphones are equipped with multiple microphones in the housing of the device. The microphones are spaced apart, for example, each at a different corner of the device, so that beam forming techniques can be used to isolate sounds from particular directions. These multiple microphone systems are normally used to isolate a speaker's voice over the ambient noise. To capture a more remote speaker using beam forming requires that the user identify that speaker while the video recording is being made.
Another common video camera location is in a conference or meeting room. When there are multiple speakers in different locations in a conference room, some systems will provide microphones around a table so that there is a microphone near each speaker. In other systems, there are directional microphones at a central location or even a single microphone at that single location. A remote participant in the conference at another location is, in some cases, able to choose a particular microphone and have that microphone amplified. In other systems, the user is able to select a particular direction and a central microphone or microphone array can use beam-forming, tagging, or some other approach to focus on a specific speaker and enhance the voice of that speaker for the remote participant.